40 out of 55 African countries are members of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) club, affording some of them preferential access to Chinese credit lines and infrastructure development spending. And for the most part, these forty countries tend to dominate the discussion about Africa’s connection with the BRI.

But what about those 15 other countries who are on the outside looking in? We rarely focus much attention on why they’re not included. So, it was particularly interesting to read today’s report in Quartz where Nairobi-based correspondent Abdi Latif Dahi spoke with Hannah Ryder, CEO of the Beijing-based development consultancy Development Reimagined, for her views on why some African countries are included in the BRI and others are not.